Browsing by Subject "Retirement"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Building Family Wealth Project: A Review of the Literature.
    (Minneapolis: Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, University of Minnesota., 2006) Hofer, Eric; Davis, Elizabeth E.
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    A case study of retirement decisions of tenured faculty at a public research university.
    (2011-01) Johnson, Leslie C.
    Faculty members who were hired in large numbers during the 1960s and 1970s are now in their 50s and 60s, and institutions of higher education are facing the largest wave of faculty retirements in U.S. history (Sugar, Pruitt, Anstee, & Harris, 2005). The aging of the professoriate in the United States has significant implications for policy makers, administrators, faculty members, students, and society. Crawley (1995) observed that in an effort to manage faculty departure, many institutions have developed retirement incentives such as phased-retirement programs. Phased-retirement programs have significant implications for policy makers, faculty, and administrators in higher education. This study contributes to the higher-education literature by providing a case-study examination of a phased-retirement program from a major land-grant institution. The purpose of this case study was to explore the impact that individual factors have on tenured faculty members' voluntary decision to participate in the institution's phased-retirement program and level of satisfaction with the phased-retirement program. The case study approach was used because it produced a rich and detailed description of faculty members' perceptions and developed possible explanations of the phenomenon. A mixed-method approach was used. A survey questionnaire collected data from 141 retired faculty and faculty on phased-retirement, and 99 faculty members from a comparison group. Later, focused interviews with 15 faculty members explored specific retirement decision-making factors in more detail. The questionnaire examined retirement decision-making factors, level of job satisfaction, perceptions of work-life balance, degree of economic security, health conditions, degree of involvement in research, retirement planning, and level of satisfaction with phased-retirement program. Response rate was 66 percent for retired faculty, 46 percent for faculty on phased-retirement, and 33 percent for the comparison group. Results suggest items such as financial security and inadequate planning for retirement were contributing factors in some faculty members' decisions to continue working, even though they were eligible to participate in a phased-retirement program. The study also revealed that the availability of low-cost, high-quality health insurance coverage was a significant factor in retirement decision-making, and work-life balance was an important factor for faculty members. Finally, retired faculty members stressed the importance of creating a culture of appreciation and improving institutional communication networks with retirees.
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    Retirement Stories
    (Journal of Opinions, Ideas & Essays (JOIE), 2023-04-19) Bettin, Kris; Allen, Gene; Boss, Pauline; Ellis, Lynda; Knatterud, Mary; Oberg, Toby; Prouty, Jo; Ware, Clifton
    Many of us enjoy hearing the stories of others. With that thought in mind, we invited UMRA members to share their stories of personal experiences during retirement via a short essay. We received a number of interesting and diverse stories that we have combined into this anthology. We wish to thank the authors for their thoughtful contributions to this collection: Gene Allen, My Retirement Story Pauline Boss, Ambiguous Loss Lynda Ellis, Have You Tried New Activities During Retirement? Anonymous, Retirement Mary Knatterud, When Every Weekday Suddenly Became a Snow Day Toby Oberg, My Transition to Retirement Jo Prouty, Metamorphosis Clifton Ware, My Life in Retirement The JOIE editorial committee: Kris Bettin, Lynda Ellis, Edward Griffin, Jan Hogan-Schiltgen, Mary Knatterud
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    Savings, Retirement Behavior and Required Minimum Distributions
    (2022-07) Zhao, Yan
    This dissertation studies the impact of Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) rules onsavings, labor participation and retirement asset decumulation of individuals before and after retirement. I document the withdrawal pattern of tax-deferred retirement assets of male individuals age 60+ in the U.S. and show that the RMD policy is a binding constraint. A structural life-cycle model of labor supply, retirement and savings is then developed and estimated using the data from SIPP and HRS. The model simulations indicate that the RMD policy is binding due to decreased mortality rates at older ages and end-of-life bequest motives. Removing the RMD rules in the counterfactual experiment results in a 2.67% increase in welfare as evaluated on a utility-equivalent basis and a reduction in federal income tax revenue of 0.994%.
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    Three Essays on Bridge Jobs of American Midlife Workers
    (2023-06) Oh, Yun taek
    The prolonged longevity has not only increased the duration of work lives but also the number of choices for the processes of retirement transition. One of the common options for these processes is called bridge jobs, defined as any paid labor market activities that connect one’s career and complete withdrawal from the labor force. While the increasing need for studies on bridge jobs, there are relatively few studies done from an economic perspective.In this dissertation, I mainly focused on bridge jobs as an important phase of the work lives that older workers go through. The first two chapters investigated the effects of switching occupations in later life, as bridge jobs, on retirement and health outcomes of American midlife workers. I distinguish occupational switching into two types: (1) switching to physically more demanding occupations and (2) switching to physically less demanding occupations. To explain the differences in the outcomes between the two types of occupational switching, I integrated the concepts of the two economics models: the Grossman model of health demand and the theory of compensating wage differential. I used the Health and Retirement Study and two-way fixed effects event study regression to complete the analyses. The results are consistent with the theoretical predictions. First, switching to physically less demanding occupations reduces the probability of complete retirement and improves physical health outcomes. Second, switching to physically more demanding occupations reduces the probability of complete retirement only if it involves wage raise, Last, switching to physically more demanding occupations deteriorates the physical health outcomes if it involves wage reduction. These studies contribute to the retirement literature by reemphasizing the importance of job characteristics, such as physical demandingness, which matters in older workers’ retirement transition. In the last chapter, I investigated the effect of occupational licensing on the decision of having bridge jobs. Occupational licensing is known to have several impacts on the labor market through its supply restriction, training and investment, and higher wages and fringe benefits. Extending these impacts to the labor market of older workers who are at the time of leaving their career jobs, I analyzed how being licensed affects the choices of bridge jobs during the process of retirement transitions. To conduct this study, I used the IPUMS Current Population Study and the Survey of Income and Program Participation and used coarsened exact matching and propensity score matching to obtain the effect of occupational licensing. The results are also consistent with the theoretical predictions. Licensed workers are less likely to choose any bridge jobs that involve the loss of career job advantages - occupation-specific human capital and tenure effect - such as switching occupations or leaving career job employers while they are more likely to choose bridge jobs that do not involve such loss: reducing work hours within the same occupation and employer. This is one of the first studies that evaluate the impact of public policies that are not directly related to retirement, such as Social Security and Medicare, on the process of retirement transition.